He steps closer, squeezing my space, and I don’t give ground. “It’s not a matter of what I know,” I say. “It’s a matter of whether you think you can take me on.”
“You rotting Melos types are always so rotting confident,” he sneers. “You think I’ve never killed one of you before?”
“You’ve never fought me.” I force a smile. “Concede the point and you can stay in the pack. You’d make a good subordinate.”
“Freeze and rot,” he says. “We had a deal.”
“Circumstances have changed.”
“Get out.”
“I want an answer.”
“As the challenged party, I have a day and a night to respond.” His lip curls. “Not that you would know the first rotting thing about it.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“I was wrong about you,” he says. “I thought you were smart, Isoka.”
“If it’s any consolation,” I tell him from the doorway, “I was right about you.”
* * *
Ahdron is correct on one point—I don’t really know what I’m doing. I don’t know my way around Soliton yet, much less the rules of power struggles. I don’t even know how to buy food, or a place to sleep.
But all that can wait. If this works, I’ll have time to get my legs under me. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll be dead, which means Tori goes to the whorehouse and Blessed knows what happens to Meroe. So it has to work.
When you’re on the bottom, you have to take risks. It’s the only way up.
I find my way to Sister Cadua’s in a series of false starts and bad directions. A tall Imperial woman meets me at the familiar curtained doorway, and now that I’m looking for it I can see her eyes flick to the marks on my face before she looks away.
“Yes,” I say, before she can speak. “It’s me. From all the rumors.”
“You want to see your friend?” she says.
“Please.”
She nods and leads me inside. We pass a number of doorways before she gestures me into a small room, where Meroe is laid out. I’m relieved to see that she already looks better than I remember, scrapes and bruises fading, breathing easily. My makeshift splint is gone, replaced with a sturdier version.
There’s a chair beside the bed, and I sit down, suddenly feeling a weight of exhaustion. For a while I just watch Meroe breath, staring at the rich brown of her skin, the delicate little upturn of her nose.
I remember the first night in the Deeps, pressed together for warmth. It’s warm enough, here, but I imagine climbing into bed beside her, huddling close. Just to be there when she wakes up. Just to feel …
Blessed’s rotting balls. I don’t understand myself anymore.
“Miss Isoka?”
I startle. I must have fallen into a doze without realizing it. Now another woman is in the room with me. She looks Jyashtani, though her skin is almost as dark as Meroe’s. Shorter than me, broad and heavyset, she has an air of unmistakable authority.
“Sister Cadua?” I guess.
She nods. “It’s good to meet you.” Her Imperial is accented, but fluent, like that of most of the people I’ve met here. She nods to Meroe. “She’s doing well. Were you the one who set her leg?”
“I hope I didn’t screw it up too badly.”
Sister Cadua gives a small smile. “Not too badly. It should heal clean, though it will take some time.”
“Good.” I look back at Meroe. “Do you know when she’ll wake up?”
“Soon, I imagine. By tomorrow, unless there’s something wrong I don’t know about.”
I nod. Sister Cadua leans close to me, examining my face with a professional eye.
“You look exhausted.”
“It’s been a busy day,” I admit.
“You can go home,” she says. “I’ll send someone when she comes to.”
“Home is … a bit tricky at the moment.”
“Ah.” She pauses. “There’s an empty bed in the next room. And we could spare you a bowl of crab juice, I daresay.”
“Very kind,” I say. “And the catch?”
“I’d like to examine you.”
I turn that over in my head for a while, but it seems only fair.
Sister Cadua is all brisk efficiency. She hustles me into the next room, and I strip off my new clothes and stand patiently while she walks around me. She touches the marks, carefully.
“They don’t hurt?”
I shake my head. “Feels perfectly ordinary.”
“And you say these came from some kind of mushroom?”
“Yes,” I say, belatedly realizing this might not have been such a good idea. Sister Cadua seems sharp enough to poke holes in my hasty cover story. “It wasn’t like anything I’ve seen up here,” I improvise. “Probably only lives in the Deeps.”
“Hmm.” She frowns. “Could you sketch it?”
“Meroe would do a better job, once she wakes up.”
She nods. “It sounds like a useful thing to add to our repertoire. I may suggest an expedition to retrieve some.”
“I don’t know if I could find my way back to the exact spot,” I say.
Sister Cadua waves a hand. “It will be difficult, of course. But without a Ghul talent in the crew, we need all the help we can get.”
I yawn. “You must get some ghulwitches as sacrifices.”
“Less frequently than you might think,” she says. “The only one I know of served in Shiara’s clade, but he was killed more than a year ago.”
There’s more to that story, but her expression warns me not to dig into it. I’m certainly not about to tell anyone Meroe’s secret, even if it still gives me the creeps when I think about it too hard. Sister Cadua indicates that I should get dressed, and leans out into the hall to summon a bowl of crab juice.
“It’ll be just the one night, you understand,” she says. “We need the space for the injured, most of the time.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “After tomorrow, I’ll have somewhere to go.”
14
I spend another uncomfortable night in the stupid Jyashtani-style bed, suspended several feet above the floor for no readily apparent reason. At least the crab juice, the soup of miscellaneous crab parts and mushrooms ubiquitous on Soliton, is hot and delicious.
In the morning, I go back to Meroe’s room. She’s still asleep, and a young man in dark robes is carefully giving her water. He pauses as she moans, and shifts uneasily.
“Her fever has come down nicely,” Sister Cadua says, when she bustles in. “She’s going to be fine, though of course the leg will take some time to heal.”
I remember the feeling of the hammerhead’s jaws closing on my own leg, the snap of breaking bones and the hot gush of blood from shredded flesh. Now the only evidence is a ring of curling blue marks around my calf, thanks to Meroe. My stomach still lurches when I think about her power, but not as badly as it once might have.
Sister Cadua and her assistant leave me alone with Meroe. Her features are smooth now, calm. Her eyes quiver, shifting restlessly under closed lids. I wish she’d wake up.
There’s a knock on the wall beside the curtain doorway, and a hesitant voice. “Isoka?”
It’s Berun, looking even more nervous than usual. I force a smile, trying to put him at his ease, but it doesn’t seem to have the intended effect. I don’t have a lot of practice not frightening people. Better to get to the point.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
He’s looking past me, to Meroe. His eyes are wide. “Is she really going to be all right?”
“Sister Cadua says she’ll be fine,” I say, irritably. The way he looks at her bothers me. “What are you doing here?”
He looks back at me and swallows hard. “Ahdron sent me.”
“Is he ready to talk?”
Berun shakes his head, miserably. “He says … he accepts your challenge. He’ll be waiting in the Ring at midday.”
I look at him blankly. “The Ring?”
“It’s where formal challenges are fought,” Berun says. “So there can be witnesses.”
Rot. I’d hoped Ahdron would come to his senses. “Did he tell you anything else?”
Berun shakes his head again. “But…”
“But what?”
“I shouldn’t tell you this.” He glances at Meroe. “The Butcher came to our quarters last night. She and Ahdron talked for a long time.”
Which explains a lot. No doubt the Butcher promised him her favor if he kills me. So much for Ahdron coming to his senses.
Rot them both, then. We’ll do this the hard way.
“Okay,” I tell Berun. “I’m going to go and get this over with.”
“But…” He looks like he’s about to cry. “Ahdron is … strong. You should apologize. He might—”
“Stay here with Meroe,” I say, ignoring him. “If she wakes up, tell her I’ll be back soon. Can you do that?”
“I’ll tell her. But what if—”
“Tell her,” I grate, “I’ll be back.”
Berun blinks, and nods.
* * *